Police arrested 28 Pakistanis found in possession of powerful explosives, hundreds of forged documents and maps of the Naples area with "sensitive targets" circled with a pen, authorities said on Friday.
In a statement, police said they had uncovered an "al-Qaeda terrorist cell," but gave no further details on the Pakistanis' alleged involvement with al-Qaeda or any other international terrorist group.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late Friday officers "might have gotten ahead of themselves" in announcing an al-Qaeda link in the headline of their press release.
The official also dismissed Italian news reports that the Pakistanis belonged to the militant Islamic group Islamic Jihad. He said any links between those arrested and international terrorist groups still had to be verified.
In several recent instances, Italian authorities have an-nounced terrorism-related arrests, only to pull back and in some cases release the suspects for lack of evidence.
In this case, police said they picked up the 28 Pakistanis, aged 20 to 48, during a routine search in Naples for illegal immigrants on Thursday.
During the raid of an apartment in the city center, they uncovered 800g of dynamite, 50m of explosive fuse and various types of detonators, the police statement said.
Another police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the combination of the materials "could have imploded a 10-story building." Police said the dynamite plus the chemicals used in the explosive fuse produced 1.5kg of T4, a powerful explosive even in small amounts.
The official said police also uncovered maps of Naples with "sensitive" targets circled. He refused to elaborate.
Italian news reports citing unidentified sources said the areas marked included the US Consulate in Naples and NATO bases in nearby Bagnoli and Capodichino.
NATO said it hadn't heard of the arrests and had no immediate comment. A NATO official in Brussels, who asked not to be identified, said the alliance treated "any threat of this kind extremely seriously."
The US Embassy was briefed on the arrests and was monitoring it closely, a US official said.
Police also found hundreds of forged identity documents, hun-dreds of cellphones, an index of thousands of international telephone contacts and addresses, and instruction manuals on how to forge identity documents, the statement said.
In addition, religious texts in Pakistan's Urdu language and other documents were found in the apartment, as well as photos of "martyrs of the Jihad," the police statement said.
The Pakistanis have been charged with association with the aim of international terrorism, possession of illegal explosive material, falsification of documents and trafficking, the statement said.
Italian authorities over the past several months have arrested several dozen people suspected of links with international terrorism. Most of the attention has focused on suspected cells linked to al-Qaeda in northern Italy, particularly Milan and Bologna.
State-run RAI television said Friday authorities were also investigating a suspected al-Qaeda cell in the northern city of Turin.
The Rome daily La Repubblica reported Friday that Italian police who interviewed detainees at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, in June spoke to two men who said they had been part of a Turin cell.
But the newspaper said the Turin prosecutor has not issued any arrest warrants, apparently because of lack of firm evidence.
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